10.10.30 -> 6.6.12...

Dad...

My dad passed away last Wednesday around 2:15pm.

I was on Mackinac Island with my cousins who were visiting from Belgium.  Not easy to mourn and host at the same time.  Didn't want them to feel too awkward.  And so, it really hasn't hit me yet.  I'm sure it will.

4 hour drive back home to drop them off and then another 30 minutes to my parents to see my mom.

He was on such a roller-coaster ride for the past 6 months; quick declines and slow improvements.  Trying to figure out what was wrong with him at the different times was always a guessing game.  It was either dehydration or infection...and it seemed to go from one to the other each time.

With infection he was totally out of it and with dehydration he was agitated and delirious.  What finally did him in was congestion it seems.  Perhaps it was turning into pneumonia...who knows?  Mom said he went without suffering - she just stopped hearing the gurgling coming from the bedroom and that was it.

So sad.  He was such a trooper.  Fighting for what little quality of life he had.  Lucky for him, when he was up, he never remembered the times he was down.  However, we did.  Whoa! what an emotional ride.

I am happy that even though the dialysis was somewhat against his will (at first), he still went and I went with him.  It gave me some extra time with him that was lacking in my older age.  We watched movies and talked about some stuff like his dentures, the Army, mountain climbing, etc.

He only got crabby at the end; pretty much the last two or three times we went to dialysis.  He DID NOT LIKE GOING!  Waste of time - boring - it's not home - he'd rather be painting.  And having to wait for the EMS to pick him up and the possibility that they would be late, it drove him NUTS!

We had a family viewing of him before he was sent to be cremated.  My sisters came in from NYC and Boston.  We will have a "Celebration of Life" for him on October 13...the weekend after what would have been his 82nd birthday.

Love him.  Miss him.  This is hard.